The best environmental jobs in the world

WHEN Ben Southall, a charity worker from Ropley in Hampshire, became caretaker of a tropical Australian island after winning a competition to bag the "best job in the world", many of us turned a shade of green. According to the job advert, he was being paid by the Queensland tourism board to "explore the Great Barrier Reef, swim, snorkel, make friends with the locals and generally enjoy the tropical Queensland climate and lifestyle". Sounds amazing, no? Publicity stunts aside, surely jobs like that don't exist in real life?

But they could. If you have an environmental, conservation or earth sciences background, you too could be enjoying some of the most beautiful places and breathtaking experiences this planet has to offer, all as part of your job. True, the luxury villa Ben enjoyed may not come as standard but at least you'll have the satisfaction of doing something good for the planet. So lie back, relax and enjoy the ride as New Scientist takes you on a tour of the world's best environmental jobs.

Wish you were...underwater?

Fancy getting paid to snorkel and dive at some of the world's most colourful coral reefs? Meet Dan Exton. He is marine research and operations manager for Operation Wallacea, an organisation that arranges scientific expeditions to exotic locations around the world. Students are charged tuition fees in return for a chance to join conservation research projects abroad, working alongside established scientists.

Exton, who worked with Operation Wallacea during his marine biology undergraduate, master's and PhD field projects, now coordinates its marine research in six different countries. He is about to visit a site in Honduras where the team is comparing the effects of two different coral reef management strategies. Exton spends about six months of the year in the field; the rest of the time he's based at the organisation's offices in Lincolnshire, UK.

Reality check: Most people can only dream of the adventures and travel depicted in programmes such as the BBC's Blue Planet, says Exton. "Being able to do it for my job is a privilege." Yet one of the hardest things, he says, is having to "cope with friends' and family's impression that you are on holiday half the year when it is really a proper job without five-star resorts! The food can be boring, it's hot and sticky, with no air conditioning, there is patchy electricity at best, and biters and stingers constantly lurk both on land and in the water."

Webb co-designed the unique hot water drilling system that will penetrate the ice sheet and spent eight weeks last winter dragging 70 tonnes of equipment across 250 kilometres of untraversed ice in a four-person team, in preparation for this year's drilling season. "We had to tow the sledges with piston bullies, the same machines that groom ski slopes," says Webb. When not in the field, Webb is based at the British Antarctic Survey in Cambridge, UK.

Reality check: Although Webb has worked on previous Antarctic projects, he says the Lake Ellsworth expedition is in a league of its own: "We were travelling over land that has never seen a vehicle before and sleeping in tents at -35 °C. The extreme cold makes it very difficult to do anything: boiling water, donning all the layers of clothing, your job... everything takes twice as long as usual. But the Antarctic is so clean and beautiful, it makes up for it. It is a stunning, peaceful place to be."

...aboard a sailboat?

Whilst Andy Webb was traversing the ice, Giada Franci from Italy was engaged in quite a different sort of crossing, sailing across the Atlantic on her 12-metre-long yacht, Kaitek, in the first leg of a four-year scientific expedition around the world. The boat monitors water temperature, salinity and fluorescence, and the information can then be fed into ocean current models and weather simulations.

Franci, who has a doctorate in marine environmental science, is co-owner of Kaitek and co-founder of Environmental Ocean Team, an Oxford-based company that connects scientists and recreational sailors by enlisting privately owned sailboats as environmentally friendly platforms for oceanographic research.

Reality check: Working on such a project means living in cramped conditions and, for most people, it won't pay the bills. However, in Franci's opinion, the ocean experience more than pays for such drawbacks: "Nothing compares to feeling the power of nature during sailing. On some days, huge waves push your boat into the water with enormous force, on others you wake up at 7am, the sea is flat and you dive into the water for the most amazingly regenerating experience ever."

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